So the following evening as we were gathered at the table for our meal, I said: “You’ve been very kind to me, but now that I’m recovered I must leave you.”
Though I thought Joey looked pleased, his parents were as alarmed as I had expected if they were receiving payment for keeping me.
“Why you ain’t well enough yet!” Mrs Digweed exclaimed. “And wherever would you go?”
“I can’t stay here costing you money,” I objected.
They looked embarrassed at these words, as I had anticipated.
“Wait until you’re stronger,” she said.
“Well, just a little longer since you’re so kind,” I said sarcastically, and I thought she blushed.
“We’re on’y paying you back,” she said. “You and your mam for your kindness that Christmas-time.”
“Yes,” I began. “I meant to ask you, how was it that you and Joey happened to be in Melthorpe then?”
I wanted to draw them out for I was sure I would find gaps and inconsistencies in their story.
They all three looked at each other in some perplexity.
Then Mr Digweed began: “It all goes back to when I couldn’t find no work in my own trade so I had to take a job with the Gas, Light and Coke Company in their new works in the Horseferry-road.”
“I remember you mentioning it that Christmas-time, Mrs Digweed!” I cried. I turned to her husband: “And you were injured in an explosion there.”
They looked at each other in surprise.
“No, it wasn’t that,” Mr Digweed said.
He seemed unwilling to say more, but, recalling my suspicions, I prompted him to go on.
“In them days the other companies was trying to lay their pipes in our district. They would break up ours and we’d do the same to theirs if we got the chance — especially when we found they’d laid their pipes overnight.” He chuckled but then looked grave and said. “But there was worse. Some of our foremen would let on they was trying to win their men over with gin, and then when they was disguised in liquor, they’d go at ’em with pikes and bludgeons. There was men killed in the gas wars. But I never took no part in that. Not until one day when I got ’tacked by the lads from the Eq’itable, and they throwed me into one of our braziers for heating the tarmacadam, and put out my eye and smashed my arm bad.”
“They took George to the cutting-ward of St. George’s and had his arm off,” Mrs Digweed put in with a shudder. “And they couldn’t save the eye.”
“So when I come out I had to be nussed by the old lady. In course, I didn’t have no work to go back to like this.” He indicated the hook.
“Did you not get any compensation? I mean, set-off?” I asked, feeling rather ashamed of my suspicions.
“Aye,” Mrs Digweed said. “I must do ’em the justice to say they gived George a hundred pound hurt-money.”
“That was a great deal!” I cried.
“Aye,” she said quickly; “but we lost it all soon arterwards.”
“Lost it? How?” I demanded, suspicious once again.
They looked embarrassed and then Mr Digweed began:
“Well, it was somebody … somebody as I knowed. He’d got hisself mixed up in this building spec over by the Neat-houses and he arst me to j’in him in it. Well, I thought it was a good thing and so I went in with him on one o’ the houses. And so did others that he knowed. And we sub-contracted to do the plaistering and j’inery work on a few on ’em. Well, I worked for nearly a year while we lived on our hurt-money and Maggie here went out washing.”
I was sure he was referring to Barney. Why did he not admit it? It could only be because he was trying to conceal this criminal connexion from me.
“How did this friend of yours become involved?” I asked.
Would they tell me what was surely the truth? That Barney had become involved in it through Sancious?
“I don’t rightly know,” Mr Digweed replied. “But I believe it was through someone he used to do things for. A genel’man. Howsomever, me and him nivver got nothing for the work we done.”
“The work you done,” his wife interrupted indignantly. “Precious little he done!”
“Aye,” Mr Digweed acknowledged ruefully. “The spec failed and so me and the old lady was worse off than a-fore, with the hurt money gone and everything hocked, and debts we’d run up besides.”
“Aye,” she put in. “That was a bad time. Yes, pretty bad, I should say, taken all round.”
“And that was when you went north?” I prompted.
“That’s right,” Mrs Digweed answered, “for that same … friend of George’s told us about work near your village. So we went down — me and George and Joey. We left … we left …”
She broke off and her husband said: “We left the other children here.”
The other children! Now, would they mention Sally whom I recalled Mrs Digweed referring to when she was at my mother’s house, and who I was sure was the young woman I had encountered in Barney’s gang.
“But when we got there,” Mrs Digweed went on, “we found there wasn’t no work for me and Joey, so we went on to Stoniton. Then I got word that the children was ill and started back. That was the time me and Joey come to your mother’s house.”
“By chance?” I prompted.
She looked at me in such innocent surprise that I shuddered inwardly at the thought that she might be dissimulating: “Yes. I knowed nothing of you before that. And when I got back here …”
Her voice trembled and she stopped speaking.
Her husband gently took her hand and said: “When she got back here she found them desperate bad. And they died a week arter.”
They were implying that Joey was their only surviving child. So they were suppressing all mention of Sally! I was sure of it. Again, this must be because they did not want me to know that she was in Barney’s company. What else were they concealing? I would give them the chance to admit the connexion with Barney.
I watched them carefully and then remarked conversationally: “When you and Joey came to my mother’s house, do you know, you weren’t the only visiters from London we had? For the house was broken into and burgled not many years before that?”
The effect of this was dramatic: they all stopped eating and lowered their eyes.
“Yes,” I went on; “and I saw the burglar.”
Nobody looked at me or spoke.
“Don’t you want me to tell you what he looked like?”
There was a silence.
Then Mrs Digweed asked: “Why, what did he look like, Master Johnnie?”
So I described Barney in as much detail as I could. They said nothing and none of them met my gaze. I was certain that they knew that the burglar was Barney. Why did they not tell me? Presumably because they did not realize that I had recognised him and discovered their relation with him.
Mr Digweed and Joey did not go to bed that night but prepared themselves for one of their mysterious nocturnal departures, and left the house a couple of hours after midnight. I heard them leave, for I had retired to rest for the night with much to reflect upon many hours before that and had been lying awake wondering what I should do. If they were in the pay of the Mompessons, then I was surely safe, though I was made uneasy by their connexion with Barney — and even more so by their failure to admit it. I would stay with them and wait for the hidden hand that had been guiding my destiny to reveal itself.
CHAPTER 85
I slept late the next morning and awoke to find that Mr Digweed and Joey had not yet returned. Already they had been out for much longer than usual and Mrs Digweed was growing anxious. I shared her anxiety — though without having any precise idea of what I should be worried about — and by ten o’clock we were both in a state of considerable alarm.
Suddenly the street-door opened and Mr Digweed’s hook appeared around its edge, and when after a moment he himself entered sideways we realized to our horror that this strange mode of entry was because he was supporting his son w
ho now staggered in behind him hardly able to stand. He was pale and trembling and blood was running down the leg of his boots. As I took this in my senses were assailed by the appalling stench that came from them now that they were inside the little chamber.
With some help from me, Joey was eased into a chair. His mother carefully removed his boots and stockings and cut back his trowsers so that we could see that there was a deep gash several inches long just above the knee on his right leg.
Mr Digweed threw off his oil-skins in the back-yard and hurried off to the Dispensary while I assisted his wife in removing Joey’s filthy outer garments, washing the wound, and carrying him upstairs.
A medical student came, applied a pledget to the wound and bound it up, bled his patient, approved of the treatment he was receiving, came downstairs again and, as he pocketed his fee, announced:
“He’ll be all right so long as it doesn’t become infected. If it does, send again for me. Keep him in bed for a few days and then at home for a couple of weeks.”
When he had gone Mrs Digweed busied herself in making a sleeping draught for her son who was now in considerable pain, while Mr Digweed went into the back-yard and occupied himself in cleaning the oil-skins.
I went out and helped him. He was less talkative even than usual and we worked in silence for a few minutes.
“Mr Digweed,” I said, “for the next couple of weeks you’ll need help, won’t you? Please let me take Joey’s place.”
He shook his head vehemently: “No, that wouldn’t be right.”
“But why not?” I persisted.
“Well, the work don’t suit everyone.”
“But,” I added at a venture, “you can’t work easily without assistance, can you?”
He stared at me and exclaimed: “Easily? Why, you can’t work at all on your own!”
“Then how will you manage?”
He shook his head gravely.
There was a long silence while we rinsed the boots under the pump and then he said: “Well, we’ll see what the old lady says. But let it lie till tomorrer.”
Joey slept well that night, and the next morning there was no sign of the wound turning bad. Mr and Mrs Digweed’s spirits having lifted, I raised the subject as we breakfasted:
“Mrs Digweed, I want to work the shores until Joey is recovered.”
“Why,” said Mrs Digweed, “then you knowed all along what they was doing!”
I explained that I had recalled her words back in Melthorpe.
“Then you know how dirty it is, and dangerous. No, it wouldn’t be right for a genel’man’s son, Master Johnnie.”
They were concerned about the danger, I imagined, because they were being paid to keep me safe. I persevered and Mrs Digweed resisted hard and long until at last, seeing that I was determined, she gave her grudging consent.
Mr Digweed nodded and said: “Very well. And you’re small enough to suit.” (It was true that I was of a size with Joey, but I was puzzled by this remark.) “There’s a low tide at midnight, so we’ll go tonight.”
I was restless all day until at last the time came for us to make ready for our departure. Mr Digweed helped me to put on Joey’s boots and oil-skins and showed me how to trim the bull’s-eye lanthorns and work the shutters.
By the time we left the house it was almost dark. To my surprise we headed away from the river and walked towards Bishopsgate. In this district there were many little work-shops, most of them connected with the slops trade, so that when I peered through windows as we passed I often saw tailors sitting cross-legged on the floor sewing in the light of a candle. No wonder so many of them became blind, I thought, and remembered my childish fancy many years before of the blind mole stitching a coat for Mr Pimlott.
We turned into Dorset-street, walked some way along it and then stopped. I looked around in bewilderment and, in the near-darkness that surrounded us in this unlit district, saw merely a quiet back-street with nothing remarkable about it, except perhaps an old brick culvert beside us of the kind so much more common at that date when many open sewers and drainage ditches could still be seen even in the fashionable parts of the metropolis.
While Mr Digweed lighted our lanthorns I leaned over the low and crumbling parapet of the shaft and saw that there was a trickle of water running along the brick-work of the culvert’s bottom. A little further along there was an arch-way leading into a tunnel, protected by an iron grille.
Mr Digweed now warned me to be ready to follow him and always to do exactly what he told me. He glanced cautiously around and seeing that the dark street was empty, he suddenly sprang over the parapet and seized with his hook the topmost of the series of iron rings driven into the brick-work, then lowered himself down the wall by their means and dropped into the shallow water below us. In surprise I followed him and we splashed our way towards the arch-way.
Now I discovered by the light of our lanthorns that the iron grille which had looked impenetrable from above, was so rusted and broken that it presented no obstacle. My companion pulled it towards him and squeezed round its side and I followed him without difficulty. As we advanced into the tunnel the smell assailed me and I gasped for air through my mouth as well as my nostrils.
For a few terrifying seconds I was overcome by dizziness and heard a loud rushing in my ears and thought my legs would give way and that I would lose consciousness, but then I recovered, the fear and nausea left me, and I found I was able to keep moving. By the glow from his lanthorn I could see Mr Digweed a few yards ahead of me, picking his way quickly along the bed of the foul stream, glancing back occasionally to make sure I was following him.
Once he let me catch up and then raised an eyebrow interrogatively. I nodded back with a forced smile and he placed his mouth next to my ear and shouted: “This is a very pretty shore. But you has to keep moving or you starts to notice the smell.”
I nodded and we moved on. Suddenly he turned up a side-tunnel. Since it was lower and narrower we had to stoop so that progress became more difficult, and the level of the water rose which meant that as it was rushing more quickly it made more noise and speech was now impossible.
After a few yards this tunnel branched and Mr Digweed chose one fork as unhesitatingly as if he were sauntering through the streets of his own neighbourhood. Now we were going discernibly downhill and the surface was so slimy that it was difficult to avoid slipping. In addition to this the stench was almost over-powering.
We walked for some time — I cannot say how long for I found distance difficult to judge and time impossible when every moment was crowded with new fears and sensations. Indeed, here where it was absolutely black and there was only the rushing of waters in my ears that might have been the rush of blood, I could not tell what was I and what was not I. When I stretched out my hands to touch the rough sides I could not tell whether I felt my own frozen fingers or the cold stone. Involuntarily, I thought of the great weight of earth and buildings and paved streets that was above us, and felt such a blind terror that I had to force myself to think of something else.
Although I now understood much, I was still puzzled by the purpose of this activity until suddenly Mr Digweed stopped and waited for me to catch him up. Then he bent down — I should say, bent even further down for we were both hunched over — and lowered the lanthorn, indicating that I should look at what he was studying.
I did so and noticed that there was something standing upright in the space left by the erosion of the mortar from between two of the stones. The object gleamed in the light and I saw that it was a coin. My companion lifted it out and held it in the beam so that I could perceive that it was a shilling, then slipped it into the leathern pouch that hung from his shoulder.
There was money lying down here for anyone to find who took the trouble to look for it! I could not understand why — apart from the noxious smell — more people did not venture down here.
We now passed along tunnels of many different sizes and characters which must have owed thei
r variety to their having been constructed at widely-separated periods. Some were medieval, though most had been built during the re-construction of the City after the Fire and its extension into the suburbs that made up the modern metropolis, and were therefore between a hundred and a hundred and fifty years old. Since, therefore, they had been constructed by means of quite different methods, through varying soil conditions, and at different angles and gradients, conditions in them were quite distinctive.
I walked behind my companion and both of us — though we were of small stature and I was not fully-grown at that date — had to stoop, which I found extremely painful to the neck and shoulders. All the time Mr Digweed was scrutinizing the surface, and once or twice he reached down to lift a coin.
Most of the tunnels were shaped like an egg, curving around us above and below; others — and these were the biggest which dated from the medieval period — were much wider and flatter and had a deep ditch, with a narrow and crumbling path-way along the side. Here the sound of the rushing water was almost deafening, though in other tunnels it glided or trickled silently, and in yet others there was no water at all but only a layer of wet or dried mud.
“Is it so easy?” I asked my patron when next we were passing through a dry tunnel and could hear each other’s voices.
“Bless you no,” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve on’y found that shillin’ and a few coppers so far.”
“But we haven’t been looking for long.”
“Why, how long do you reckon?”
“I don’t know. Do you not have your watch?”
He laughed: “A watch wouldn’t last long down here.”
“About a half-hour?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “Nearer two. You see, we won’t find much up here. We’ve got to get down to where the mud builds up for that’s where everything gets washed down to. But we can on’y stay down there for about an hour at the most.”